


Spiral Virus

by Oxytocin (hydrocortisone)



Category: Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
Genre: Alien Gender/Sexuality, Bathtubs, Canon Divergence, Crack Treated Seriously, Denial of Feelings, Dom/sub Undertones, Emotionally Repressed All-Powerful Eldritch Amalgamation, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, It/Its Pronouns for the Antispiral, Kittan Lives, M/M, Multi, Nia Lives, No Tentacle Sex, Pining, Polyamory, Redemption, Sharing a Body, Sorry It Just Didn't End Up Happening, because i fucking said so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:09:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27665209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hydrocortisone/pseuds/Oxytocin
Summary: Simon and the Dai Gurren-Dan show up in the Antispiral pocket dimension to rescue Nia, and face off against the Antispiral in a final showdown. It does not go the way anyone expects it to—especiallynot for the Antispiral.(Originally drafted in 2012 for PolyBigBang, but not completed. Now finished in 2020. Hooray for the soft apocalypse.)
Relationships: Nia Teppelin/The Antispiral, Simon/Nia Teppelin, Simon/Nia Teppelin/The Antispiral, Simon/The Antispiral
Kudos: 1





	Spiral Virus

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so 99.9% of this was originally written for 2012 [PolyBigBang](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Polyamory_Big_Bang). I was about 500-ish words from completing the first draft... and then I got dumped by my significant other. Said SO was also my beta reader. I ended up having to withdraw because between heartbreak and having no beta, it just wasn't going to happen.
> 
> Cue 2020. Thanks to Lockdowns, I suddenly have a lot of time on my hands to work on fanfic. And this fic, such as it is, is The One That Got Away. I swore to myself I'd finally finish it. Which apparently includes drastically rewriting the entire beginning, because that's how I roll, I guess. And if I'm going to do that, fuck it, it's _my_ story, I get to decide if Kittan Doesn't Die because he found a way to _punch gravitational forces in the face until they cry for mercy_.
> 
> ~~Rewatching TTGL to double-check lore was a Time, all right~~
> 
> Anyway. Contains a mix of series canon and movie canon, based primarily in my personal preferences. (I prefer the series' trigger for the Messenger's appearance, but then also prefer the movie's final fight sequences, for instance.)

Energy tends to transition from a higher state to a lower state. A ball on a slope will probably roll down the slope; it doesn’t spontaneously launch itself into an upper atmospheric orbit. This tendency is what’s known as entropy.

Spiral power is what happens when the universe looks at entropy, and goes, “Hold my beer.”

Here is the thing about entropy: it depends upon randomness. The randomness tends to result in a lower state, but it does not guarantee it. With a pair of six-sided dice, the probability of rolling higher than two is greater than the probability of rolling exactly two, but there always remains a 2.78% chance to roll snake-eyes.

A spiral warrior doesn’t even bother rolling. They pick up the dice and slam them back down with the numbers they want facing up.

No matter how astronomical the odds against it, a spiral warrior can just decide that the ball yeets itself into the de Kuiper belt because they want it badly enough.

A spiral warrior can decide that they can move from a three-dimensional submanifold of 11th dimensional spacetime to a completely separate 3-brane by shoving a spaceship the size of the moon through the light refracting off of the gemstone setting of an average-sized engagement ring on a woman’s hand.

It should not work. But it did.

The rush of new matter into an enclosed space interrupted the forces supporting the woman in the air, causing her to fall. A man landed on the ground ahead of her, catching her in his coat.

“I’m here, Nia,” he said to her, smiling. “Just like I promised.”

“Simon,” was Nia’s only reply, burrowing into his coat with gratitude.

A set of giant conical drills speared the ground in two columns ahead of them, a companion of theirs landing on each one as a makeshift platform. The Dai-Gurren-Dan crossed their arms, glaring forward at the space’s owner—Nia’s captor—in a united stance of defiance.

“This shouldn’t be possible,” said the Antispiral, its featureless eyes perfectly circular with surprise, like the headlights on a car. “No sentient mind should be able to escape the infinite possibilities of the Multiverse Labyrinth.”

“We don’t care,” said Simon. “We don’t give a damn about space or time or Multiverse Whatevers. No matter what you try to stop us with, we'll make our own path through! That’s the Dai-Gurren-Dan way!”

“The Death Spiral Machine was way worse, anyway,” said Kittan with a grin. “As if we could fall for wish fulfillment bullshit after beating something like that.”

The Antispiral seemed to consider them. It was the same basic size and shape as a man, but the space around it appeared warped, refracted, luminous at the edges, like the light passing through a black hole’s accretion disk before the inescapable darkness of the event horizon.

“It would have been better for you if you _had_ fallen for the 'wish fulfillment bullshit',” it said, its eyes narrowing. “You would have lived the rest of your lives in ignorant bliss.”

Their response was laughter in unison. “What, and let you destroy the Earth?” said Yoko. “Just who the hell do you think we are?”

Before it had an opportunity to respond, the drills launched upwards, transforming into individual gunmen before combining with each other to form a singular robotic figure of immeasurable size and mass—an aggressive expression of the strength of their will: Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.

It rubbed its chin with its hand, unthreatened by the display. “After being exposed to this much spiral power, it’s no wonder the Messenger was made Irregular.” It waved its hand to one side, a skeletal figure of equally massive size forming out of the mist in an instant: Granzeboma. “Very well. If this is the shape of your resistance, I will fight you on your level.”

From one perspective, this was a battle of cosmic giants, throwing galaxies at each other as improvised weapons. However, at the same time, it would be just as valid to describe it as:

Simon grabbed the dice, and slammed it down. It’s a seven. Not a particularly imaginative number—it’s the most likely result at 16.67%. The Antispiral saw it coming and dodged easily.

It grabbed the dice and threw down a two. Too obvious; the odds for 2 might be magnitudes lower than 7, but out of everyone in the Dai-Gurren-Dan, more than one thought it was a likely move. They dodged with the same level of ease.

Yoko’s turn: she snatched the dice like she would lift a rifle in her hands, take aim with her sights, and fire. A four, 8.33% likelihood, the same as rolling ten. The ground beneath the Antispiral’s feet stood firm, but a quarter of the crust shattered and broke off a mere five kilometers away, floating into space and exposing what lay below.

“Is that a planet?” she asked, bewildered.

“Yes,” said Nia. “It’s the Antispiral homeworld.”

Leeron’s eyes widened. “What?”

“She is correct,” the Antispiral said, its hand closing over the dice. “Our race was once a spiral race, like your own. But we came to realize that if we continued to use spiral power—to create mass where none existed before, to create energy instead of changing the state of what already exists—the density of matter would cause the gravitational attraction of the universe to exceed its expansion, and then collapse in on itself.” It made a fist around the dice as it lifted them up. “A collapse we call the Spiral Nemesis.

“We annihilated the other spiral races to stop the destruction of the universe, leaving only a few stragglers at the edges of space.” Flashes of the planet’s surface appeared before their eyes—billions of identical, bone-white, naked figures lying on the ground beside each other, eyes shut. “We sealed ourselves away here, forever stopping our own evolution in order to prevent the Spiral Nemesis.

“Do you possess anywhere near the same determination?” it asked, slamming the dice down.

Two eight-sided dice, Eight and Eight, making 16.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann was sent flying like a rag doll, crashing unceremoniously millions of light years away.

“No, you do not,” it sighed. “You have absolutely no idea what you’re doing.”

“That’s not true,” said Simon, slapping his hand down on the dice.

“Really,” said the Antispiral, flatly. “Then you came all this way to rescue the Irregular while knowing that, as an Antispiral lifeform herself, if you destroy me she will also die?”

Simon turned to Nia in shock. She didn’t speak, but the look in her eyes said everything.

The dice slipped out of his fingers, unbidden, rolling a total of 3.

“I thought as much.” The Antispiral picked up the dice again. “Look at you, all of you. You’re drunk on power, using it to satisfy your own selfish desires without even knowing or caring what the consequences will be.” It threw down the dice again.

18, from an eight and a ten. There was a loud crunch followed by the high-pitched screech of metal as Granzeboma tore off one of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann’s arms and threw it aside. 19, from nine and ten. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann’s other arm promptly joined its brother.

Ten and ten, making 20. 20. 20. 20.

“That is your fundamental limitation,” it said, not stopping for a second. “That selfishness is what leads to the destruction of the universe.” 20. 20. 20. 20. “That is why you must be destroyed.”

It tore Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann apart, piece by piece, the dripping fragments reconstituting into the individual gunmen that had combined to become it. It only paused once it had completely disassembled it, holding the original, minuscule Lagann in the palm of its hand.

“Have I broken your spirit yet, foolish spiral being?” it asked Simon, massive bone-like fingers closing slowly around his gunmen. “This will be much less painful if you give in.”

“Give in?” He flashed a wicked grin. “Who said anything about that?”

A hand in its peripheral vision snatched the dice, smashing them back down hard enough to make cracking noises.

“I may not be able to help that I was created by you,” said Nia, plunging the spear of a smaller gunmen into a structural weak point of Granzeboma’s wrist. “But I can resist it to the very end.” Her hand withdrew from the dice—twelve and twelve and twelve for 36.

Granzeboma’s hand shattered into pieces, harmlessly dropping Lagann to the ground.

Three hands snatched a die each after Nia. Six twelves, 72. More hands reached out, more hands threw down, and each throw-down multiplied the die: Twelve twelves, 144. Twenty-four twelves, 288. Forty-eight twelves, 576. The gunmen of the Dai-Gurren-Dan swarmed Granzeboma with overwhelming numbers, pummeling it into the ground.

“Nia,” said Simon. His eyes began wide with surprise, then softened with regret.

“Simon,” she said, smiling at him. “You came all this way to do what you had to do.”

“You’re right.” He shook himself out of it, and turned Lagann toward Granzeboma. “Do you still think we lack determination now, Antispiral?”

It cast off the gunmen with some difficulty, struggling to its feet. “Now I can see why you were able to escape the Multiverse Labyrinth.” It raised Granzeboma’s handless arm, seeming to point with its stump, a strange energy starting to glow at the end of it. “But this is not over _yet_.”

It was as if the dice lifted on their own, and in a single moment, exploded in count beyond the point that even many hands could grasp at once. They continued multiplying, unceasing, long past the threshold that eyes would ever be able to register anything more than a growing sea of perfect icosahedra.

“That looks bad,” said Kittan, staring without blinking.

“As x approaches zero,” said Leeron, sweat beading on his forehead. “The limit of the function of x approaches infinity.”

“That sounds even _worse,_ ” said Kittan.

For one instant in time, the entirety of the known universe was a speck surrounded by light.

“Just what I was waiting for,” said a familiar voice on the comms, oddly soft compared to the last time any of them had heard it.

A spiral warrior can be kept around posthumously as a preserved head in a jar, hooked up to various pieces of technology and discreetly referred to as a biocomputer. A spiral warrior can, in an appropriate moment in the appropriate space, decide he’s not going to be a head in a jar anymore, and reform his body and choice of gunmen out of miscellaneous spare particles. He can make this decision in the microscopic fraction of a second needed to perform an impossible sacrifice, to absorb an infinite amount of exponentially increasing energy and pass it along in a form Simon could use.

Spiral warriors like to do things like that. Especially the dead ones.

Is it necessary to go into the fine details of what Simon did with that amount of energy? The metaphors would have to twist in on themselves even further, contort themselves so out of shape that the inside of things is now the outside, the outside is still the outside, time is stretched and forked and reaching back to wring its own neck. The abstract concept of a boundary is on the verge of shattering into meaninglessness. All the the Dai Gurren-Dan have at their disposal has been consolidated into a memory more than three and one third million times the size of the known universe. If this had taken place in the standard D-brane extending across the eleven dimensions of spacetime, everything they had ever known and fought for would have been obliterated by their own determination.

Drill against drill, clockwise against anticlockwise, the turning and turning of a widening gyre against every effort to rein it in, pull it back, stop it before it’s too late. It reaches the breaking point, and everything collapses.

For a moment, it seemed as though the world had ended.

Of course, if the world had ended, there would be no one to notice its passing. There would be no “seemed”.

The memory fragmented; the Dai Gurren-Dan began to break apart into individuals in gunmen; all drills had fractured. Granzeboma no longer had any arms at all. Gurren Lagann charged towards it in an unstoppable scream of defiance.

Arms like fine threads whipped out from the Antispiral, standing on the surface of the tiny planet. In the fraction of time before being torn apart, the arms managed to slice at Gurren like wire garrotes. Lagann detached and continued hurtling towards the surface. Its cockpit opened up. It reached into itself with one hand, grabbed its own pilot, and threw him forward hard enough that he should have been incinerated by the friction of air molecules.

That’s a small thing for a spiral warrior to deny, of course.

Simon rolled forward as he hit the ground, a full somersault that he pushed up into a headlong run when his feet met the ground again. He used his own rising momentum to punch the Antispiral hard enough to send it stumbling backwards.

It wiped something like blood off of its mouth, and stared at him.

The Antispiral rushed forward, fist raised. Simon wove to one side, letting it pass him, and brought an elbow down hard at the back of its neck. There was a snapping noise, and it fell forward, hitting the ground chest-first, with its neck at a distinctly unnatural angle.

It pushed itself up on its hands, and with a series of light cracking noises, it rolled its neck back into position. Muscles and bones were clearly not involved, even if it looked like they were.

“You cannot win,” it said. “The universe depends on it.”

“No,” said Simon. “It doesn’t.”

“You’re overwhelmed with emotion,” it said, rising slowly to its feet. “You’re not thinking clearly about the consequences—”

It saw Simon charging again, his arm extended straight, and quickly bent hard at its waist to avoid being knocked over.

“This is the path that leads to extinction,” said the Antispiral, snapping back upright. Its eyes were narrowed, and it actually seemed to be breathing heavily. “Why can’t you see that? Why can’t you be reasonable and _see_ the limitation of the Spiral races?”

“No, that’s _your_ limitation,” said Simon, and there was fire in his voice as well as his eyes. “Look at you! Closing yourself off, hiding in some isolated pocket from the rest of the universe, insisting that everyone has to be held back, to be smothered until they suffocate, without any say in what happens to them. _You_ decided that was the only way to save the universe. _You_ decided you were going to force everyone to do what you wanted, to obey you, like you’re some kind of a king.”

“I’m not a _king_ ,” it said, almost screaming at him. “This isn’t about obedience!” It whipped its arm at him, splitting apart into long tendrils that swiped at him, successfully raking open some skin as he dodged out of the way. “These aren’t the power-hungry whims and desires of some tyrant! We had to give up _everything_ because no one else would—”

Simon grabbed the tendrils of the arm as it flew past him, crushing them in a fist. It let out a short cry of pain.

“No one has to give up anything,” he said, wrenching it forward by the tendrils and wrapping them around his hand. “That’s only if you don’t believe in anyone, if you don’t even believe in yourself. We all make mistakes, we all make bad choices, but we’re always getting better because we’re always moving forward.” Simon stared into its wide eyes, their faces inches apart. He was bleeding where the tendrils grazed him; he remained unwavering and implacable. “We’re never the same person we were a minute before. Every second we’re evolving, getting further with every turn—like a drill _._ ”

The Antispiral stared back at him, its expression unreadable, before it snapped off its own arm, like a lizard shedding its tail, and stumbled back. It watched him warily as the stump regrew its hand and the rest of the limb.

The dropped piece crumbled like ash in Simon’s hand, blowing away with the dust in the wind. It didn’t faze him at all.

“I _will_ believe,” said Simon, insistently. It continued to watch him as he raised his arm to the cloudless sky. “I will believe in myself, in humans, in _us_ , and I will believe that we _can_ have a future.” The blood dripping from his wound rose up into the air, molecules spiraling about his hand, until the mass drew together and solidified into a drill.

Simon pointed the drill at the Antispiral. Pure determination was written across his face.

Its mouth curled into a wide smirk, slowly, extending far past the limits of a human mouth.

They charged each other at the same time.

The dust kicked up by the rush of movement cleared slowly. Simon stood steady, his drill still pointed where the enemy had been. The Antispiral fell past the inside of his arm, thrown forward by inertia; it caught itself on Simon’s thighs and collapsed to its knees.

There was no hole. No injury from the drill. Simon had missed.

“Simon!” Nia cried, distracting him when he was about to knee the Antispiral in the face. That hesitation gave enough time for its shoulders to sprout extra arms, and for those arms to wrap around his hips and lower torso. Simon’s own arms remained free, and with a yell, he swung his drill back towards the Antispiral, stabbing at its neck.

“Simon,” it said, echoing Nia, and he stopped. The drill had barely pierced its surface, the skin that was not skin, starting a thin trickle of blood that was not blood down the Antispiral’s neck.

The arms, Simon realized, were tense, but not tight. There was no effort to crush him, to tangle his legs, to knock him over. The hands grabbing onto him were shaking; its head remained lowered between Simon’s legs, the face unseen.

“Simon!” Nia cried again, and she scrambled out from under Lagann, rushing to his side.

“I’m okay,” he said, not entirely sure if he was or not. He wasn’t hurt, but this was strange. Surreal. It left him feeling unsettled.

Nia circled them uneasily, drawing Simon’s coat tightly around herself. She opened her mouth to say something, then seemed to catch herself, and covered her mouth with her fingertips. As if in response, the Antispiral began to shake with quiet laughter, though with its head lowered, it bore a strong resemblance to a body racked with sobs.

“It—was a poor decision,” it finally said, so softly that Simon could barely make it out. “It was a poor decision to absorb Ni—” A pause. “The irregular’s data.”

“You didn’t absorb Nia,” said Simon. “She’s right here.”

The laughter and shaking grew louder and more erratic. “Absorbed part of the irregular’s data. Not enough to compromise structural integrity in this space.” The Antispiral’s hands gripped Simon harder, arms tensing even further—an effort to control the shaking, he realized. “Enough to be… infected with the irregularity.”

Simon’s thoughts went back to the final charge. He remembered the Antispiral’s unnaturally wide smile, its fist raised to counter as it rushed him with equal speed, and it was the wrong arm, the wrong side—its fist would have passed by the outside of his drill arm and connected with nothing.

He remembered Nia in Cathedral Lazengann, holding herself in front of the core, daring him to drill through her to stop the Human Extermination System. He remembered a glint of light from the ring on her finger catching his eye at the last second: the sign that inside, she was screaming for help, that she didn’t want to die.

“Victory is not possible without the will to defeat you,” the Antispiral continued. “That will is incompatible with this irregularity.” The shaking ceased, its hands relaxing their grip and arms growing slack.

Nia said nothing, and she did not smile, but Simon could see her expression soften. She brought a hand forward, cautiously reaching out to touch the Antispiral’s back.

“Promise me,” it said suddenly, forcefully, and Nia’s hand stopped short. “Promise me that you will protect the universe.”

“We will,” said Simon, certain of _that_ if nothing else. “Believe in us.”

All of its force and tension were gone now. The Antispiral shifted its weight back and let its head rest against the cloth on the inside of Simon’s left thigh. “Then I surrender to you, Simon the Digger.”

Simon and Nia watched as the Antispiral gradually broke apart into small cubes, floating away and disappearing into the air. Hundreds of millions of miles away, the Dai Gurren-Dan watched as Super Granzeboma dissolved like a sandcastle in the tide.

๑ ๑ ๑

The reconstruction effort took some time. Parliament Tower was severely damaged from the Mugann attacks, but not to the point of being irreparable. Enough of it remained intact enough for the government to continue something like business as usual. There was still an ongoing issue with riots and crowd control; Simon’s trial and sentencing had been a temporary band aid, at best. In the wake of the Antispiral’s defeat, public opinion had widely swung back in his favor, in any event. A majority, though, not a consensus. People had still lost their homes, lost their livelihoods, lost friends and family, and it all had to be someone’s fault.

There was also the matter of what was happening in space. If only it had just been the sudden flood of contact from the freed Spiral races of the universe. If _only_.

“So the pocket dimension unwrapped itself,” said Rossiu, “and the planet from that dimension deposited itself in our solar system?”

“Seems like it,” said Leeron. “It's settled into a stable orbit on the other side of the asteroid belt.”

“But why?”

“It's hard to say this early on, but…” He flicked through several sheets in his clipboard, stopping to rap the knuckles of his pen hand on a remote page. “From what we can gather from partial backups of the Lord Genome Computer, there used to be a planet there called ‘Mars’.”

Rossiu leaned back in his chair, his fingertips braced together in front of his face. “Then the Antispirals were our neighbors?”

“Hardly,” said Leeron, “Mars was also called the ‘red planet’, from iron oxide dust on its surface. This Antispiral planet is as white as bone.” He let the paper fall back into place with a shuffle and a low sigh. “No, Mars was destroyed in the war. What's left of it drifted into the asteroid belt a long time ago.”

“So they’re taking its place,” said Rossiu, frowning. “Why would they do that?”

“Hm.” Leeron tapped his pen against his lips, smiling thoughtfully. “Maybe it's their way of trying to make amends—use their own planet to replace a planet they destroyed. It’s a nice gesture, don’t you think?”

Rossiu turned in his chair and stared out the window. Looking out over Kamina City from the heights, it still looked like more than half the capital consisted of nothing but scaffolding and rubble.

“We can’t afford to assume things like this happen as nice gestures,” he said. “The other spiral races are starting to contact us. We need to keep an eye on that planet, if only to make it clear to them that we’re on their side.”

“Well, of course,” said Leeron, chewing on his pen just enough to mask the beginning of a disappointed pout.

๑ ๑ ๑

They should lay low after the wedding, Rossiu had advised Simon, leave Kamina City for a while. Nia’s broadcast as the Messenger, the lives lost as a result of battling the Mugann—these were too fresh in people’s minds, and there was no way to completely prevent anyone from deciding to take matters into their own hands. Best to have a small, quiet wedding, and then a long, quiet honeymoon. Maybe a few years long.

No reason not to sleep in, then.

The sun was already high overhead and creaking in around the curtain edges before Nia’s eyes half-opened. They drew their heavy-lidded gaze up from the sheets to Simon’s head on the pillow beside her.

It was not Nia who had opened her eyes, and it was not Nia who stared at Simon through them for several minutes, studying his closed eyelids, his eyelashes, his cheekbones, his mouth. Very carefully, very cautiously, it slid her arm along the bed towards Simon, then shifted her body forward to rest her face on the inside of her elbow, close enough to feel the warmth of his breath.

One of Simon’s eyes snapped open and winked. Before there was time to react, one of his arms had flown over the covers to hug Nia’s shoulder, and Simon’s mouth was pressed to hers.

It was not Nia who felt heat rushing to her cheeks. Nia’s other hand had flown up to Simon’s chest to push him away, but the push had no force in it and only caused her fingers to press against his nipple. Simon hummed with approval and the tip of his tongue flickered gently against her lips. Her mouth seemed to open on its own, and goosebumps rose at the back of her thighs when Simon’s tongue began to lick at the underside of hers.

It was not Nia who was aching with the temptation to surrender again and _melt_.

With a sudden surge of willpower, Nia’s mouth tore away from Simon’s with a gasping “Stop.”

Simon stopped immediately and drew back a little, his eyes wide with surprise. “Nia! I'm sorry, I—”

“I'm not Nia,” it said, Nia’s chest heaving with exertion. “Nia’s asleep.”

Simon’s eyebrows pinched in confusion.

It shoved hard against the hand on Simon’s chest. Nia’s hand went nowhere, but with a wrenching snap, the Antispiral split out of Nia’s spine and hips, falling backwards into the bed. Somehow it took the stress with it—Nia’s body returned to a state of peaceful sleep, while the Antispiral spent a minute trying to catch its breath.

Simon gaped in open-mouthed horror for the whole minute.

“Will you stop looking at me like that?” the Antispiral asked, finally.

“ _I kissed you_ ,” said Simon, a little too loudly—Nia mumbled and stirred in her sleep.

“You thought you were kissing your wife,” said the Antispiral, pointedly not making eye contact. “So, that’s all it was. You were kissing your wife.”

“What are you doing in my bed?” he said, his shock giving way to anger.

“I wasn’t _looking_ for your bed,” it insisted. “I needed to be able to talk to you discreetly.”

“So you took over my wife?” he asked, sitting up.

“If you want to get technical,” it snapped, “I am _always_ inside your wife.”

Simon’s immediate reply was a flat stare.

“I meant it literally,” said the Antispiral.

The flat stare was joined by crossed arms.

“Not that kind of literal,” it added.

“Keep digging,” said Simon.

A high yawn interrupted the argument as Nia rolled onto her back and stretched her arms above her head.

“Good morning, Simon,” she sighed.

“Morning, Nia,” said Simon. He continued to stare at the Antispiral. Its head was on Nia’s pillow.

Nia began to bring her arms back down, and her elbow connected with what passed for the Antispiral’s scalp. It let out a noise, more a huff of breath than anything, and she turned her head towards the sound.

Nia stared at the Antispiral.

She stared at it a bit longer.

She kept staring at it.

“Good morning?” it ventured.

“Simon,” she said, sitting up and moving closer to him, still staring at the Antispiral. There was a question in her voice.

“I was just asking him what he was doing here,” he told her. “And he was about to explain that, right?”

Their staring eyes seemed to burrow into its surface like two pairs of spinning drills. Rationally, there was nothing to be afraid of, but tell that to the residual phantom sympathetic nervous system.

“As I said before,” it said, scooting back to the edge of the bed, “I came here to talk to Simon.” Its legs slid to the floor, and it stood up, sheets dropping. “That’s it. Nothing else.”

“But you were in the bed,” Nia pointed out.

It straightened the sheets with a hand and tried to smooth out the wrinkles. “That’s because you were. I had to pinpoint Simon’s location somehow, and you are usually within a reasonable distance of him.”

Simon cleared his throat into his fist.

“Ah,” said the Antispiral. “A missed detail. I was also intending to use your body to talk to him.”

Nia blinked.

“You weren’t using it,” it insisted. “I was only intending to discuss what was necessary, then leave before you woke up. No harm done.”

“Couldn’t you just talk like _this_?” Simon asked in frustration. “You don’t have to possess Nia to talk. You’re doing it right now!”

The Antispiral looked him in the eye. “If someone else walked into this room this very second and saw us talking like this, what would you tell them?”

“I’d tell them the truth,” Simon replied.

“And you’re absolutely certain they would believe you? You’re absolutely certain that they would trust that you weren’t hiding anything at all?” Its mouth shaped itself into a thin, humorless smile. “I know how to set traps. I also know how to avoid them in the first place.”

“You were worried about Simon,” Nia said suddenly.

The thin smile disappeared. “I wasn’t worried.”

“If you weren’t worried about getting Simon in trouble, you wouldn’t be trying to avoid it,” she insisted.

“He promised that he would protect the universe,” it replied, irritably. “If the rest decide he’s a traitor, he can’t very well do that, can he?”

“I already did,” said Simon. “And besides, I didn’t promise I would protect the universe—I promised we would.”

The Antispiral paused at this. It brought a hand to its chin and puzzled over it.

“You’re right,” it said, rubbing at its chin and looking down at the bed. “You said ‘we will’, not ‘I will’.” Its alien eyes glanced at Nia. “That means you’re included in this, after all.”

“Included in what?” asked Simon. Nia blinked in confusion.

The Antispiral sighed. “I wanted to discuss the terms of my surrender,” it said. “And one other matter.” It let its hand drop to its side. “I suppose that will have to wait.”

“Terms?” he asked, frowning. “What terms? You already surrendered.”

“Not terms of negotiation,” the Antispiral clarified. “Reservations can’t be added after the fact, I know. I meant my obligations upon surrender.” It crossed its arms. “What you want from me.”

“Oh,” said Simon, sheepishly. It could hardly be said that he had no experience of war—he _had_ defeated the Spiral King himself in the siege of Teppelin—but somehow, it hadn’t occurred to him that the Antispiral might have to do more than just… well, not kill the human race.

“If you were going to give no quarter, I would be dead. And as a result, so would she,” it added, nodding toward Nia. “So I had thought that preserving her life might have been an implied condition.”

“Yes,” said Simon, with all the force he could manage while half-dressed in bed. Nia looked down, sheets bunching in her fingers.

“Then I must remain alive,” said the Antispiral, calmly. “As a condition of the surrender.”

“Why don’t you just reverse what you did?” asked Simon. “Make Nia human again. You can create pocket universes, weird crushing oceans in space, and that stupid labyrinth dimension dream world whatever-it-was thing—why can’t you just give Nia her life back?”

“You weren’t listening very much in the heat of battle, were you,” it said, phrased as a question but without the tone of one. “Well, I suppose you can’t be faulted for that. Hypersecretion of cortisol often correlates with retrograde amnesia.”

“I have no idea what you’re saying,” said Simon.

Another sigh. “Never mind.” It rubbed at its temples with one hand. “Ni—” It stopped, annoyed with itself. “She can’t be ‘restored’ to humanity, because she was never fully human to begin with.”

“That’s not true,” said Simon, taking her nearest hand into his. “Nia’s always been the most human person I’ve ever known.”

“That’s not a genetic definition of human,” the Antispiral chided.

“I don’t care,” Simon replied.

Nia just closed her eyes, focusing on Simon’s hand in hers.

“You will have to care about it,” the Antispiral said, “if you’re going to have any understanding of what she is.”

Simon’s only response was to stubbornly set his jaw. The Antispiral decided to regard this as encouragement, or something like it.

“When Lord Genome surrendered,” it explained, “it was an explicit condition that he would monitor the surface of his own planet and make sure the human population remained under one million. Cathedral Lazengann was repurposed for the Human Extermination System, and replaced the moon as a permanent reminder of this agreement.” Its mouth twitched, then smiled at one corner. “I admit he was clever. I expected him to try to find some loophole in the terms, but I never expected him to create an entire species without spiral power, or to drive his own race underground. Literalism at its finest.

“However,” it continued, the corners of its mouth dropping again, “I had to be prepared for the possibility that he might not keep his word. So, when we settled matters, I altered Lord Genome’s genome—” It paused, as if suddenly realizing something for the first time, and started giggling into its hand.

Simon raised an eyebrow. No words spoken—only the eyebrow.

“Sorry,” it coughed, regaining its composure. “I seeded a Messenger program in his genome, set with the same activation trigger as the Human Extermination System. At activation, his entire genetic code, all his cells, everything would be converted to an Antispiral equivalent, and the Messenger program would archive his consciousness and take over his nervous system in order to oversee the process of his former species’ destruction.”

Nia opened her eyes suddenly, though she didn’t look up. “Archive his consciousness?”

“Well, yes,” said the Antispiral. “I can’t determine what went wrong if all the evidence is destroyed and I absorb a program that knows nothing about what happened before it was triggered, can I?”

“So Nia was the Messenger,” said Simon, eyebrows furrowed in thought, “because Lord Genome was dead?”

“Because Lord Genome was dead and he had a surviving child,” it said. “If he had died without any children, there simply would have been no Messenger.”

“I remember,” said Nia, “watching myself tell Simon I didn’t remember anything. I remember watching myself tell him I had been erased.”

“Dissociation,” the Antispiral said with a pleased hum, “is a highly encouraged side-effect of the archival process. It helps protect sensitive data from loss of integrity due to corruption.” It seemed to catch itself again, and the hum stopped. “The Messenger program itself is only written to say whatever seems like it will cause the greatest despair in a given context. It doesn’t actually ‘know’ anything.”

“Thank you,” said Nia, smiling softly.

“For what?”

“For making the Messenger protect me instead of erasing me,” she said, finally looking up at it.

The Antispiral had been looking her in the face as it talked about the Messenger, but suddenly the bed sheets needed more attention. “That’s not what I said. It wasn’t protecting you, it was protecting your data.”

“It archived my consciousness,” she said.

“Yes,” it said, straightening the sheets. Again.

“So—my data is my consciousness.”

The sheets reached the maximum possible straightness that did not involve mitered corners or bouncing a coin.

“Yes,” it said, moving on to straighten the pillowcase on her pillow.

“That means protecting my data is protecting my consciousness,” continued Nia, “and protecting my consciousness is protecting _me_.”

“That’s a philosophical question,” said the Antispiral.

“No, it isn’t,” said Simon. He had been watching things carefully from the moment Nia had begun to talk about her memory, but this, he had to butt into. “You’re the collective consciousness of the Antispiral race, right? So if Nia’s consciousness isn’t Nia, _you aren’t the Antispirals_.”

The Antispiral stopped tugging on Nia’s pillowcase.

“Touché,” it said. “You’ve caught me in a logical fallacy. Another hard-won victory for Simon the Digger.” It stiffly stood back up, and crossed its arms. “Can we return to the original topic now?”

“Oh! That’s right,” said Simon. He’d almost forgotten that they had been talking about something else. “Um, I… honestly can’t think of anything else you need to do.”

“I’d thought you might not,” it said, “since you don’t seem to have any knowledge of what Lord Genome’s generation lost. I assumed that if you did have any, you would want back what could still be returned. Territorial occupation is also fairly typical after surrender.” It absentmindedly slid a fingertip up between its eyes, and then seemed to catch itself with a grumble.

“So,” it continued, “I decided to kill two birds with one stone and move Zeboma to this solar system to take the place of the Mars base. Your species will need it, if you’re going to be resuming contact with the other spiral races.”

Nia’s eyes went wide with surprise. “You moved Zeboma?”

“What’s Zeboma?” asked Simon. “I know Granzeboma was the gunmen you made to fight Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.”

The Antispiral looked at him. “How would you know that? I never told you its name.”

“Nia told me,” he replied. It looked at Nia; she smiled innocently.

It considered this for a moment, then nodded. “Fair enough; I should have expected that. Yes, that was Granzeboma. Zeboma itself is our homeworld.”

“Yeah, I get that part,” said Simon, crossing his arms. “I don’t get why you named it Granzeboma, though.”

The Antispiral sighed. “Because Zeboma,” it slowly began, making a small circle in the air with a finger, “goes on top of Gran.” It made a chopping motion with both hands slightly below where it had made the circle. “Therefore it makes Granzeboma.”

“Like when Lagann combines with Gurren,” said Nia, “and they make Gurren Lagann.”

“What’s Gran, then?” asked Simon, still not satisfied.

“It’s—” The Antispiral seemed to furrow its eyebrows despite a complete lack of them. Both Simon and Nia watched it make awkward half-gestures with its hands for a minute, as if trying to think with them.

“It’s everything that was in Granzeboma except Zeboma,” it finally said, weakly. “I had a fraction of a second to name it, I didn’t tell you what I had named it, and I wasn’t expecting to ever have to explain it to anyone else, anyway.”

“So you were completely bullshitting your way through that battle,” said Simon, a grin slowly creeping onto his face.

“I was not bullshitting,” it protested. “No one had ever escaped the Multiverse Labyrinth before. I needed to improvise.” It crossed its arms. “As if ‘Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann’ makes that much more sense. In a spiral battle, there’s no time to dwell on such things.”

“Tell yourself whatever you need to,” Simon replied, still grinning.

“ _Are we actually going to talk about the surrender_ ,” it said, seeming almost flustered, “or are you going to keep going on tangents?”

“Sorry, sorry,” said Simon, waving a hand in semi-apology. “So—you moved your planet to where a human base used to be in space, so humans can have a base there again. Is that right?” Simon stopped, suddenly remembering something. “Wait, can we even do that? Aren’t you all sleeping there?”

The Antispiral froze for a moment. That’s right, it had shown fleeting glimpses of Zeboma to the Dai-Gurren Dan during the battle. It had shown them the ruined buildings, and it had shown them their discarded individual forms on the surface, rows and rows of supine asexual bodies purged of all individual distinction. But it did not let the sight linger long enough for them to see that not one chest ever rose or fell with breath, and it did not transmit close enough for them to observe in detail, to see that the skin of each sessile figure was as dry and fragile as tissue paper.

“Earth’s human population only recently reached one million,” it replied. “It will probably be another few millennia before you take up more than a trivial amount of space on your own planet, let alone ours.”

“If you say so,” said Simon, cautiously. He hadn’t missed the Antispiral’s frozen moment of thought, or its artful dodging of his question, but its expression had changed so suddenly from embarrassment to—he wasn’t sure _what_ the hell it had been.

“I suppose we’re done here for now,” it said, a hand to its chin again. “I’ll have to talk with you alone at some point, so it’s not like we have to decide everything here this instant.”

“Of course not,” said Simon. “I haven’t even had breakfast yet.”

“Then I’ll leave the two of you to your morning,” the Antispiral replied, nodding at him. “Simon.” It turned to Nia, and hesitated. “And you,” it settled on. Simon blinked, and where it had stood beside the bed was now empty space again.

Simon fell back onto his pillow, arms sprawled. “God, that was awkward,” he said, groaning with relief. Nia laughed.

“But it went so well,” she said, beaming. “He’s doing so much better!”

Simon looked up at her skeptically. “Were we having the same conversation?”

“He called you ‘Simon’ four times,” Nia said, holding up a hand with fingers spread and the thumb curled in.

His eyes widened. “You’re right,” he said. “Not one ‘foolish spiral being’. Not even a ‘puny human’.”

“He said half of my name again, too,” she added happily. “And two halves make a whole!”

Skepticism returned to Simon’s face. “I’m not sure that’s how it works, Nia,” he said.

๑ ๑ ๑

The first act of the Antispiral was an artificial apocalypse.

It stopped the movement of tectonic plates, evaporated the oceans, dispersed the atmosphere, and set about expunging Zeboma of its own flora and fauna. The act was painful at the time, but necessary: it couldn't allow the possible evolution of another spiral race on its own home planet. Every virus, every bacterium, down to the last living cell—everything had to be reduced to dust.

Yet when it came to the buildings, the roads, the discarded bodies of their now Integrated race, it couldn't follow through. Ridiculous, of course. These things contributed nothing to its mission, and to allow nostalgia would be far too close to regret—a suicidal choice when it would need to match the unfaltering confidence of the typical spiral warrior.

The Antispiral compromised with itself. It stripped away their clothing and personal decorations. It wiped away their individual traits, the variations of phenotype, the signs of aging, until even mother and infant could not be told apart. It laid the bodies in even rows along the highways and interchanges; when it ran out of road, it began to line them up in storm cellars and parking garages, museums and arenas, schools and hospitals. It completed laying out the bodies before having to resort to people's homes. Former homes.

This meant there were more than enough decaying buildings to retreat into.

Technically what the Antispiral was lying on had been a meeting table—ornately carved stone and a Cultural Treasure for a paltry three hundred years. Still, it could remember the tryst that a government councilor and her assistant had on top of it a few years before Integration; if the table could survive that without breaking, it would probably support its weight now.

The details of the memory were clinically clear from both participants' points of view: flirtation, a partial striptease, statistically typical foreplay, vaginal intercourse in the missionary position, and so on. It could have yawned if that action wasn't just as unnecessary. It had all been Very Exciting at the time, but after they and the rest of their race became the Antispiral, the memory of body parts mashing into other body parts held no great appeal.

Sexual desire derived from the reproductive urge reinforcing a species’ evolutionary drive and spiral power, it had concluded. Naturally, it would have no interest.

Simon's mouth pressed to Nia's again in its memory. It remembered the warmth of his hand on her back, the tip of his tongue against her lips, and shivered at the memory of his tongue slipping inside. Without permission, its imagination went farther, imagined the kiss deepening, Simon's hand traveling down her back and firmly gripping her—

It caught itself, took a deep breath, told itself to count backwards from thirty and focus on the table under it. It made it to twenty-five before Simon's wink popped back into its mind.

Either its original conclusion was incorrect, or the irregularity was more... _systemic_ than it had realized.

This could be approached rationally, it reminded itself. Just form a hypothesis and test it. If the question had to be regarding this unexpected resurgence, then to test it would require—self-experimentation. _Rationally_.

The Antispiral let out a small sigh of relief, and allowed its mind to wander again. For Science, of course.

It remembered falling past Simon's arm in that last moment of their battle, its face passing within inches of his chest, almost close enough to taste the sweat and blood trickling down his abdomen. It had caught itself on his legs; its hands felt the tension in the muscles of his thighs. Even after lowering its head, it could smell the musk between his legs. In the present, it could barely avoid squirming at the heat rising between its own.

It shut its eyes and brought its hands up beside its head, picturing Simon's hands in their place. It gripped its jaw with one hand and ran the other's fingers along its cheek. It traced its lips, slipped the tip of a finger in, and thought of Simon looking down at him, a demand in that fingertip and in his eyes.

No, it couldn't possibly happen like that. The Irregular had been there, too, she would have—seen—

It jerked once, violently, at that thought. The Irregular. She'd be _watching_. She'd see _everything_. It was—almost horrifying how completely overwhelming that was. How _completely_ —it stifled a groan, and one hand dropped between its legs.

It had an erection already. It hadn't even considered whether to have a cock or something else, but there it was, at attention.

Trembling, it took its cock into its hand and gave it a tentative stroke. And then another. It wasn't long before it had a rhythm—panting, heaving, imagining Simon's cock in its mouth, sucking at the head, licking the shaft, feeling his hips buck in response. It imagined looking up at his face, and moaned at the thought of seeing not only Simon looking back, but _her,_ her arms hugging his chest, placing a kiss on his shoulders, watching it suck him off—

The Antispiral had failed to notice a deep rumble growing louder, and now it was followed by a shattering crash outside. The building rocked and sent the table a good six inches up from the floor, and then back down again. Frames fell off the wall. Long-settled dust rose in sudden clouds.

It blinked in shock, both hands in the air and away from its crotch. That... wasn't _supposed_ to happen, was it?

There was another crash, causing smaller tremors. The building shook again, kicking up more dust.

Ah. Unrelated phenomena. It coughed a little in embarrassment. Of course it was.

Some concentration revealed that Gurren Lagann and some grapearls had touched down at a ridiculously close distance. The beastman was grumbling about the gravity on their communication frequencies. The Antispiral was tempted to cut into the signal and tell him what a terrible landing that was—did he _have_ to leave a crater?—but it was, now, covered in dust and far from interested in an argument. Its erection had completely vanished, returned to the same featureless meeting of legs as usual.

It sighed. Maybe it would be better to try to talk to Simon again. It could move to the other side of the planet, certainly, but with Gurren Lagann, best not to chance it.

A moment later, there was nothing but dust on the table.

๑ ๑ ๑

Marriage was, admittedly, a concept Nia was always learning about, even after getting married. When Simon had proposed to her, that first time, it had seemed so silly. Two people becoming one? Two people would always be two people. They could be together, but they would always be separate people. Why wouldn’t they want to be?

Still. When he had said those words to her, a feeling rose in her that she could not put into words, or explain to Kiyal later. Behind the nonsense that it sounded like, a chill ran under her skin, as if remembering a ghost story she had been told by Beastmen before she was old enough to speak—that two people actually _could_ become one, and the result would be that one person, alone. Forever.

But then Kiyal and Kiyoh explained it to her. It was just a figure of speech—Simon only meant that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, and of course she wanted to spend the rest of hers with him. Why couldn’t he have just said that?

Well, they were married anyway, though Nia still wasn’t sure she understood all there was to it—her father hadn’t been married to her mother, or to any of the women at the foot of his throne. Yet other people kept telling her things like “now that you’re married, you can have children.” Obviously people were able to have children without getting married—otherwise she wouldn’t exist! It didn’t make any sense.

At least she and Simon were together, and they had definitely not become one.

Rossiu had stopped by early in the afternoon while they were finishing a late lunch. There was something he had to talk with Simon about, since he was still technically Supreme Commander, and for some reason—right after she had offered him some seaweed soup she’d made, Nia remembered—he said it had to be _as far from the house as possible_. He’d grabbed Simon’s arm and taken off running toward the distant shore fast enough that she almost missed it when they both fell face-first into the sand. Boota practically went flying.

Rossiu must really love the beach, she had decided.

She could have followed them, but Simon was Supreme Commander, not her, after all, and they seemed to be having so much fun, throwing sand at each other and yelling about something. They might be doing that for a while, not to mention whatever they needed to talk about.

She carefully moved their dishes into stacks in the kitchen sink for when Simon came back, then tiptoed upstairs to the master bathroom. She could have just walked, of course, but she’d learned from Yoko that sometimes things were more fun if you snuck up on them, like a cat.

The master bathroom was connected to the master bedroom instead of the hallway, and it had a beautiful porcelain bathtub—“large enough for two people” had been a selling point. Simon had been to a hot springs with Kamina when he was alive; a hot bath wasn’t exactly the same, she was sure, but it was a good start.

She started the water running, then took off her sundress and panties and neatly folded them on a dresser by the door. The mirror had already started to fog up by the time she had finished twisting her hair up behind her head and clipped it firmly in place. She checked the water once with her hand—a good temperature, a good height—then turned the faucet off, stepped into the bath, and lowered herself in with a sigh.

Baths were _wonderful_.

Simon and Rossiu were apparently not yelling anymore, since she couldn’t hear anything above the sound of the water and her own breathing. She leaned back as far as she could without letting her hair get wet, and felt her body lifting itself back to the surface.

Her breasts floated the most easily. They weren’t large enough for it to be seen right away like it would be with Yoko, but she could feel them pulling gently upward, and she could watch them wobble about as she breathed.

Somehow her cheeks and ears were getting very hot, like she was blushing. That didn’t make any sense. It couldn’t be from the bath water, because it felt _hotter_ than the bath water. That didn’t make any sense either.

Nia sat up again, and listened. Just the water and her breath. Her breathing was a little heavy, but it returned to normal, and her face cooled down with it. Maybe it was the bath water after all.

She reached out to fetch a bar of soap from the soap dish and began to lather her arms. There was still an odd feeling she couldn’t place. It felt like someone was sitting behind her, but she was the only one in the tub. She could even see in the fogged-up mirror that there was nothing behind her except the rest of the bathtub and the wall.

She moved from lathering her arms to her neck, and from her neck to her breasts—at which point she heard a loud yelp inside her own head, and then heard a loud splash behind her. _Not_ in her head.

In the fogged mirror, she could see a black blob behind her pink blob in the white blob of the bath. An extra set of breathing had joined her own breath and the water.

“Sorry,” it said, meekly.

Nia slowly turned to look at the Antispiral. Its arms lined the back third of the bathtub, hands clenching the rim, and it had shoved itself as far back as possible without phasing through porcelain. Thin knees awkwardly poked out of the water on either side of her back, pressing hard against the tub walls.

“I was—looking for Simon,” it said, its wide eyes seeming far wider than usual.

“He went to the beach with Rossiu,” said Nia.

It took a minute for this to sink in.

“Ah,” it said.

For another minute, there was only the sound of the water and Nia’s breath.

“Do you know when he'll be back?” it asked.

“Not really,” she said.

Little tremors radiated out along the water’s surface from where it met the Antispiral’s legs and torso.

“Ah,” it managed to say. “I—I should—”

“Help me wash my back!” finished Nia, with a sudden and startling smile.

It stared at her, frozen.

“I always have trouble reaching back here,” she said, turning away slightly and attempting to mime scrubbing between the lower parts of her shoulder blades. “And I'm never really sure if I’ve gotten it or not.”

From her gestures, it looked like she was right—her arms weren’t flexible enough to easily reach that far back.

“All right,” it said, hesitantly. It was a reasonably sexless part of the back. Besides, it was a little humiliating that she was being so much more reasonable about this than the Antispiral itself. It was hardly the first time she’d been naked in close proximity to it. Just the first time after it had fantasized about her while— _oh_.

She cheerfully presented it the soap and, after it took the bar from her hands, scooted back in the tub until she was firmly planted between its thighs. That was while it was still leaning back; in leaning forward to reach her back, there would be no way to avoid its legs pressing into her hips. Or its groin into her rear.

Nia sighed happily, and stretched her arms in front of herself.

This was _such a bad idea_.

Be reasonable, it told itself, breathing slowly. She had merely overestimated how far back she had to move. Assumed excessive physical limitations. Unnecessary, but understandable.

It worked up a lather with the soap, then extended one hand to her back, lengthening its arm until it reached its destination. Success, and without leaning forward.

On touching her, she leaned back into its hand. It’s a reflex, the Antispiral told itself as it rubbed between her shoulder blades and _only_ between her shoulder blades in precise, clinical circles.

She hummed in approval, leaning further onto its hand. Still a reflex, it reminded itself.

An orgasm is a reflex, part of its mind “helpfully” remembered.

“That’s enough,” it told her, snapping its hand back. “You can reach everything else.”

“Thank you,” she said, flashing it another smile as she turned and splashed some water at her back to rinse it.

“I should go, then,” it said, lifting itself out of the bath. The hand at her back suddenly flew up and grasped its forearm, and it froze. Her smile had been replaced by a look of concern.

“Please stay,” she said.

The Antispiral didn’t move, didn’t breathe. She couldn’t have just said that. She couldn’t have.

“It’s okay,” said Nia. She loosened her grip and gently rubbed the back of its arm with her hand. “I know you’re not going to hurt me. You promised Simon you wouldn’t, and I believe you.”

It slowly lowered itself back down. She smiled again, and her hand stayed on its arm.

“There’s no reason you should,” it said.

“Maybe,” she said. “But I do. Is that strange?”

The Antispiral hesitated before answering her, evaluating the soft smile, the tilt of her head, the slight squint to her eyes. “I just don’t understand it,” it finally said.

“It’s okay if you don’t.” Her hand left its arm and retreated under the water. “I just wanted you to know.”

A sobering memory floated up. Weeks ago—was it really only weeks?—the Antispiral had sensed the failure of the Messenger to carry out her duty, and retrieved her from Cathedral Lazengann. The utter obliteration of the Messenger’s programming by her natural will had been perplexing, fascinatingly so.

It had taken its time absorbing her data. It had told her what a riddle she was, explaining to her why her actions made no sense, why there was no reason for her defiance, why her unwavering will and faith were illogical and improbable.

“You will never understand,” she had said.

“I don’t need to understand,” it had replied. “I only need to know.”

It had been a patent lie, even then. It knew it was only necessary to absorb and analyze her data to discover the cause. It chose to indulge in conversation because it _wanted_ to.

The Antispiral shifted its gaze to the foggy mirror. The steam was starting to condense, and a few droplets ran in streams down the glass.

“I’m sorry,” it said.

“It’s really all right,” she said, leaning towards it.

“I had no real chance of survival,” it said. “I was operating from habit and denial. It was enough to succeed when all I had to do was seed doubt in the right mind, but your will was greater. If Simon had not arrived in time to interrupt—if I had absorbed you completely—you might have simply overwritten my existence.” The corners of its mouth turned up, though not exactly in amusement. “The Antispiral race would have ceased to exist. There would have only been… Nia Teppelin.”

Her name seemed suspended in the air between them, uneasily, like it was walking a tightrope from one to the other.

“That isn’t true,” she said, quietly.

“Is it?” Some of the tension left its legs. An ankle brushed against one of her knees under the water. “It might happen anyway. Even the small amount I absorbed has changed so much. Things that should not be communicable, but are. Your faith, your emotions—self-replicating, like a virus.”

“That isn’t _true_ ,” she said again, and the urgency in her voice startled it. It wasn’t simply concern, now—she actually sounded frightened. The Antispiral looked back to her, and saw she had completely turned to face it, perched on her knees.

“I have no solid evidence to draw any conclusions from,” it admitted, gently, “but there is no doubt that my emotions are now, in some ways, mirroring yours.”

One of her hands broke the surface of the water. “I don’t understand. What do you mean?”

It looked away from her, though not in any particular direction—just not at her. “The way you feel about Simon, for one.”

Another moment of silence—the time it would take for that to register, it figured. Then, a sudden, splashing lunge forward. Her hands planted on its shoulders, her chest against its chest, its neck inexplicably nuzzled by her forehead and the bridge of her nose. The water swayed violently from the surge of motion, might have even spilled over the rim and onto the tile.

Her breath feathered along what passed for its collarbone. Its arms and legs were tense again. It turned its head away and tried not to think, and especially not to think about what parts of her body were pressing against it where.

It should have asked what she was doing, but that carried the risk of causing her to stop.

“That’s what was different this time,” she finally said. “He’d touched your heart, too.”

“He touched _your_ heart,” it insisted. “That data simply overwrote the default on absorption.”

“You’ve absorbed the data of other Messengers before,” she said. “Why would I overwrite you when they didn’t?”

The memory of their first meeting kept floating back into its mind, stubbornly refusing to be dismissed. Her eyes had fixed on its face as it spoke to her, refusing to look away. It intentionally wasted time with conversation, explaining details of her situation to her that she already would know from being a Messenger—all for what?

For a moment longer with those eyes looking back. For another minute of plucking at the string of her will and hearing her voice respond.

It lowered its arms from the rim into the bathtub. “This morning,” it said, its hands coming to rest on its knees, “you pointed out that protecting your data was protecting your consciousness, and protecting your consciousness was protecting you.”

“Yes,” said Nia, almost humming into its neck. “Thank you.”

It felt its throat tighten a little at the “thank you”. “That’s not why I brought it up,” it said. “I just meant—that this never happened with previous Messengers is irrelevant. Their data wasn’t your data.” It took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “They weren’t _you_.”

Nia lifted her head and drew herself up. Her chest was still pressed to its chest, her palms pushing harder against its shoulders from the shift in her weight. It could feel her breath on its cheek.

Then it felt her lips there, too.

It jerked wildly, turning its head back to face her. She was smiling gently, no sign of mischief on her face—assuming Nia was even capable of it.

“Thank you,” she said again, and it became nearly impossible to ignore the warmth of her body, the softness of her skin, or the increasing heat in its core.

This was a terrible idea. A stupid idea. It should have just left the instant she’d said that she didn’t know when Simon was coming back. He could walk in at any moment and see—

Its hips shot up once, completely without permission, and Nia’s eyes widened in surprise. Probably from the erection against her thigh.

Well, that was exactly the _wrong_ thing to think about if it hadn’t wanted it to get any worse.

Nia’s hands went to the rim, lifting herself off the Antispiral. The reduced contact didn’t help much—not when it was replaced with a clear view of her breasts. She looked down between her legs at its sudden new appendage, then back at the Antispiral’s face, then back between her legs.

“Sorry,” it said, cringing with embarrassment. “That’s… it’s an accident.”

“I thought it was a cock,” said Nia.

It blinked at her. That was… not exactly a word it expected to hear out of her mouth.

“Well, yes,” it admitted. “That, too.”

“I thought you didn’t have to go to the bathroom,” she said, continuing to stare at it.

“I don’t,” the Antispiral said, secretly grateful for her strange priorities. “It’s vestigial. An optional element of the humanoid form.”

“Oh,” said Nia, sitting back on her calves. “So you can’t do anything with it?”

“Not really,” it lied.

“That’s a shame,” she said, one arm dropping into the water. “I think it’s cute.” Her fingertips tickled down the inside of its leg. Did she even _realize_ what she was—

Her hand was suddenly _on_ its cock, gently petting it, like she had mistaken it for some kind of animal. It shivered and let out a small moan.

“See, I didn’t think it couldn’t do anything,” Nia said, beaming.

“Nia,” it managed to gasp, one of its hands snapping down to guide hers away. “You—don’t want to do that.”

“Why not?” she asked. “Simon always likes it when I touch his.”

Goddamn it. The mental image of her hands on Simon’s cock was _not helping_.

“We just shouldn’t,” it said, still breathing heavily. Logic would have to wait for when it could actually think about something besides sex. Hopefully soon. Except it wasn’t actually hoping it would be soon.

“But I do want to,” she said, her eyebrows furrowing. “Is it… that you don’t want to?”

It laughed uncontrollably, with sharp, convulsive shivers. “I _want_ to, Nia,” it insisted, failing to keep the growing urgency out of its voice. “But _Simon_ wouldn’t want you to.”

Her face softened with understanding. “You’re worried about hurting Simon.”

This was where, the Antispiral knew, it should protest. It should explain the common societal role of marriage in the regulation of sex. It should cite multicultural examples from multiple planets at varying stages in their histories. It should be able to wax analytic on the practice of monogamy without it ever involving anything even remotely vulnerable.

Its mind kept abandoning these routes, returning to the sensation of Simon’s tongue in its mouth, Nia’s hand stroking its cock.

“Yes,” it confessed.

Nia stood up abruptly, water splashing about her calves. “Then I'll go talk to him about it,” she cheerfully declared, clambering over the rim. The Antispiral gawked at her as she reached for a nearby towel.

“You feel the same way about Simon as I do, right?” she said, drying herself without any apparent self-awareness. “So I'll tell him about it. He knows how I feel, so I know he'll understand.”

“I don’t—” it said, weakly, and that was about all it could manage before she had tossed the towel over the mirror and thrown on her sundress.

“It’ll be okay!” she insisted, kicking on her sandals. “He’s only at the beach with Rossiu. I think I can interrupt them for this.”

And then she was gone.

The Antispiral sat up slowly, leaning on one arm on the outside edge of the tub.

Her underpants were still neatly folded on the dresser by the door.

It had maybe five minutes before she reached Simon, pulled him aside from his current business, and told him everything. Then probably another two before Simon reached the bathroom. It had seven minutes to teleport out—no, it couldn’t trust itself to even _walk_ properly with this erection.

Seven minutes to get rid of it, then. And Gurren Lagann crashing nearby a second time wasn’t likely.

It turned to face the tub’s edge, putting both arms on the rim and shifting its weight forward. It sprouted two new arms from its back, reaching around its sides. One hand slid across its hip; the other reached down and curled its fingers around the shaft.

It closed its eyes and began to stroke itself.

It pictured Simon behind it, pressing it against the tub wall, his chin resting on its shoulders and his hand firmly gripping its cock. The steady pace of its initial strokes melted into frantic pumping, bathwater splashing and its breath hitching as it imagined Simon grunting against its cheek, his free hand gliding down to grasp its inner thigh.

“Terms of surrender,” it imagined him saying, his mouth at its neck, “Maybe _this_ should be the terms of your surrender.” It moaned loudly, and its hips began to rock into its hand with urgent desperation. It clasped the rim, gasping his name, completely beyond the ability to keep quiet.

A sudden blast of air and noise caused its eyes to open, and Simon was there—not imagined in the bath, but actually there, in the room, arms crossed and standing on a pile of sand. Seeing. Everything.

It sent the Antispiral over the edge, screaming, its vision blurring as it came.

๑ ๑ ๑

Simon knew something was up the instant he saw Nia running towards the beach. When she took him aside and started talking about the Antispiral, his blood began to boil and he didn't wait for her to finish; he jumped into action, ready for—

—ready for, um—

—a completely different situation than _this,_ he realized, watching the Antispiral slump over the edge of the bathtub, arms and head dangling loosely.

There was _really_ no mistaking what had just happened. Especially given they made direct eye-contact at the moment of... well.

Simon stood there awkwardly, eyes wide and cheeks burning. His arms remained crossed but all badassery had been completely knocked out of him. The Antispiral stayed half-dangling out of the bathtub, clearly breathing but otherwise not moving at all.

Did it pass out? … _could_ it pass out?

He uncrossed his arms and tentatively took a step towards the tub. No reaction. A second step; still no reaction. Only when Simon was close enough that his feet were below its head did the Antispiral start to weakly reach forward with its hands, missing his legs and grasping at air.

Simon brought a hand to its head, meaning to tilt it up and get a look at its face. To his surprise, it leaned into the touch, warmly rubbing its cheek into the palm of his hand.

He could feel his own cheeks growing redder, and his mind, unprompted, imagined his other hand unlatching his belt buckle—

Simon pulled his hand back and shook himself out of it. What the hell was he thinking? Rossiu and Nia were going to be inside the house in _literally_ a minute or two.

“Right,” he said, rolling his sleeves up and trying to keep his voice steady. “Come on, you can't just stay there.” He slipped his arms under the Antispiral’s armpits and lifted it up off the edge and out of the water.

“Sorry,” it crackled, softly, like warm, barely-in-range long distance radio at the lowest volume setting. Its eyes were half-shut, red spirals having grown to overtake most of the glowing white.

It was surprisingly lightweight for someone who could swing a punch as hard as it had when they fought on Zeboma. Simon had no trouble at all flinging it over his shoulder and holding it in place with one arm while he pulled the chain of the bath stopper to let the water out.

A thick, clear substance was floating on the surface of the water—faintly iridescent, like an oil slick. Even though he knew damn well what it actually was, he couldn't help but find it oddly beautiful.

He had just enough time to throw the Antispiral into the bed and toss a sheet over it before he heard the front door opening and the familiar sound of Rossiu completely losing his shit.

“What. Was. _That_ ,” was the greeting Simon received from Rossiu when he made his way down the stairs. Nia was absolutely beaming behind him, her hands clasped together in genuine glee.

“The Antispiral,” said Simon, “I think.”

“Oh, no, I could tell _that_ from halfway across the island,” said Rossiu. “You told me you were negotiating! You didn't say anything about—”

Simon raised a hand to cut him off. “Look, a lot of stuff just happened and I’m still trying to figure it out myself.” He shook his head. “Nia, I’m sorry, can you go up there and—”

Before he could even finish the sentence, Nia had already pounced, giving him a tight hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you,” she said. “I knew you'd understand.”

Rossiu gaped, bug-eyed and speechless, as Nia released Simon from the embrace and practically danced up the stairs and out of sight. For a solid minute he had no response, and then he turned to Simon, gesticulating wildly at the stairwell. Eyebrows and eyes did most of the talking and they had quite a bit to say.

“Believe me,” sighed Simon. “I’m just as lost as you are.”

“Please tell me none of this is what it sounds like,” Rossiu pleaded. “Say ‘I know it sounded like _this_ but, hahaha, _funny thing,_ it’s actually this _totally different_ thing,’ or something. Please.”

“I mean,” Simon said, awkwardly. “It… kind of is what it sounded like? But also not what you’re thinking.”

Rossiu put his face in his hands, swore under his breath, took deep breaths through his nose and carefully exhaled through his mouth.

“I cannot _believe_ this is happening,” he said, rubbing his temples. “We’re re-establishing contact with _all the other spiral races in the galaxy,_ and you two are—” He broke off and made Upset Hand Gestures at the ceiling.

Simon had to admit, Rossiu had a point. He wasn't reacting to any of this the way _he_ would've expected, either. This was awkward and embarrassing, definitely, but he _should_ be completely mortified, shouldn’t he?

And yet, he thought about the Antispiral’s hands braced on his thighs, another pair of arms wrapped around his hips, saying his name in a quiet voice.

He thought about watching Nia sleep, shutting his eyes quickly when he saw her stir, and how she watched him for a long time with a sad look in her eyes. There was something different about the way she moved closer. Something different about the way she breathed when he kissed her, the way her mouth opened for him and she arched into him—

Thought about how it couldn’t look him in the eye when it told him, “That’s all it was. You were kissing your wife.”

Responding the way he “should” seemed painfully cruel now. And, he had to admit to himself, he just didn’t want to anymore.

๑ ๑ ๑

It was hours before Rossiu actually left, much longer than he'd planned on staying. They had both gotten extremely distracted from the original point of his visit, and it took a while before conversation worked its way back to Gurren Lagann’s mission to Zeboma and what they had discovered.

“There’s not a scrap of life on the planet,” Rossiu had told him. “Just rows and rows of mummies laid out side-by-side. Leeron can only look at the feed and scanner readings, of course, but he thinks it’s not intentional embalming, just the result of leaving corpses in a dry environment with a complete absence of any bacteria or fungi—” He rested his hand on his chin, casting a skeptical glance upward. “But then again, laying that many corpses out in even, regular rows is as intentional as you can get. That doesn’t happen by accident.”

They'd found libraries full of books, fragile but still intact after what might have been aeons without being read. Museums with the assembled bones of ancient beasts, or collections of carved stone figures and bas reliefs, distinct and individually recognizable in ways that the corpses were not. Laboratories and research bases filled with ancient machines, broken and decaying but intact enough to reverse engineer.

“There’s more there than we have left from the Old Earth,” said Rossiu. “And for all we know, they might have records from there, too. If nothing else, it’s another place to start looking.”

Simon had patiently listened, nodding and taking it in as best he could without interruption. The Antispiral had mentioned before that he didn’t know “what Lord Genome’s generation lost,” that it presumed he would “want back what could still be returned” if he had. It was starting to become more clear what it had meant by that.

The sun was setting over the ocean when Simon finally returned upstairs. The light was faded, a pinkish lilac casting long shadows, but he could see the sheets on the bed had been changed, crisp and neatly tucked in. The old sheets were tossed in a corner in a pile with a bath towel on top. Nia laid on her side in the middle of the bed, her breath rising and falling softly as she slept, her arms outstretched in front of her.

Simon sat down on the side of the bed facing her, reaching out and gently sliding his hand into one of hers. It sleepily closed around his fingers, and he caressed her knuckles with his thumb.

“I can tell it’s you, you know,” he said.

The soft rise and fall stopped with a twitch. Her body remained still, her hand remained in his, but a tension had entered the air.

“You said you needed to talk with me about something alone,” Simon continued. “Nia’s sleeping and Rossiu’s left.” His fingers tightened around Nia’s hand. “So come on. Stop hiding.”

A sigh escaped her lips, and the Antispiral rolled out through her back to the opposite side of the bed. Nia’s hand released her grip on Simon’s as it sat up, and she curled in on herself, pulling the sheets with her as she murmured contentedly.

“Thanks,” said Simon. “I appreciate it.” The Antispiral said nothing, not turning to face him.

A long few seconds passed with Simon sitting on one side of the bed, the Antispiral on the other, and Nia curled up between them. Outside the window, the first few stars were starting to appear in the night sky.

Finally, Simon stood up. He walked around the bed to the other side, and grabbed the Antispiral by its shoulders. The Antispiral’s head snapped up in surprise as he turned its body to face him, but its eyes remained focused somewhere between his collarbone and his shoulder.

“Look at me,” said Simon, quietly but firmly. “Look me in the eye.”

It swallowed nervously.

“ _Please_ ,” he said, and the urgency in his voice was surprising enough that its eyes flicked up to meet his almost by accident.

He’d had to bend over slightly to reach its shoulders, seeming to tower over it, their faces closer than they would be otherwise. The expression on his face was serious, but not angry. The intensity in his gaze still sent a shiver down its spine.

“I can explain,” it started to say, “The irregularity—”

“—is _a load of bullshit,_ ” said Simon, the fire in his eyes growing and his grip on its shoulders tightening. “Stop trying to blame Nia for the fact that you’re not any different from the rest of us.”

Its head jerked instinctively toward the middle of the bed, though the moment it seemed to realize it had, its eyes snapped back to Simon’s face. They held both guilt and a question.

Nia shifted in her sleep, mumbling softly.

Simon sighed and released its shoulders with a light shove. “Come on,” he said, “Follow me.”

๑ ๑ ๑

The only light was a thin sliver of a waxing moon, already rising high in the sky as the last traces of blue twilight gave way to stars in the darkness of space. Ocean waves softly rolled in, lapping at the sands and the occasional manticrab running along the shore.

The two stood side-by-side—Simon’s hands perched in his pockets, the Antispiral’s arms loosely crossed—both staring out at the reflection of the crescent moon in the water.

“All that talk of ‘being reasonable’ and giving up everything,” said Simon. “From someone who kept his home planet preserved in a pocket dimension.”

“You’re right,” it replied, flatly. “Keeping Zeboma served no purpose. It was unnecessary sentimentality—”

“ _No,_ ” he said, eyes darting to the side. “I’m not saying you shouldn’t have kept it.” He turned his gaze back to the ocean. “I’m saying that’s when I should have realized how much of a hypocrite you were.”

It said Nothing, its mouth drawn into a thin, perfectly level line.

“You held onto it,” continued Simon, “because it _meant_ something to you. You’ve had it from the start, for as long as all of this has been going on.”

Almost instinctively, it lifted its gaze from the waves to the stars, its expression softening. “You can see it from here, actually.”

Simon’s eyebrows raised. “What, Zeboma?” He turned his head to look at the Antispiral, and his gaze followed its line of sight to the sky.

“Not all of the lights in the sky are stars,” said the Antispiral, its crossed arms loosening into a cradling gesture. “Some with the brightest and most steady light are other planets in your solar system. They’re not always visible at all times of the year, but they’ve always been there.” It lifted a hand, pointing slightly to one side of the moon. “Venus is the brightest body in the sky after the sun and moon, enough that humans used to call it the ‘Lightbringer’.” The hand moved, pointing in a slightly different direction, not very far away. “The next brightest is usually Jupiter. An ancient Earth civilization used the path of its orbit to devise the twelve Earthly Branches of their calendar.” A shift to point back where it had first lifted its gaze. “And then the third brightest was Mars. Now it’s Zeboma, instead.”

“Huh,” said Simon, his eyes following its finger as best he could. A smile slowly crept onto his face. “So one of the lights belongs to you, too.”

It cocked its head to one side, puzzled, its hand hovering in thought in front of its chin. It opened its mouth as if to speak, just as Simon turned his eyes from the sky back to its face. Whatever it was going to say quickly transformed into an awkward cough into a loose fist.

“You know, I never got to thank you for standing down,” he said, still smiling. “Not just for Nia’s sake. I’m glad I got the chance to get to know you, too.” His hand traced over the small of its back as he spoke, coming to rest on its hip before it had even registered what was happening. A bold gesture, seemingly fearless, if not for the tiniest hint of sweat on his palm.

It looked at Simon. Time seemed to slow to a crawl, the world shrinking down to that hand on its hip, and that smile on his face.

“So am I,” said the Antispiral, leaning in until their foreheads touched, and it closed its eyes.

It wasn’t long at all before it felt Simon tilt his head and softly touch his lips to its mouth. It pressed into the kiss with a grateful sigh.

That snapped time out of its crawl, almost too forcefully—almost no time seemed to pass before they were clinging to each other, Simon’s hand at the back of its neck, their open mouths pressed together, tongues swirling in a heated spiral—

When did they end up on the grass, panting and gasping, with Simon straddling its hips?

His hands put the bulk of his weight onto its shoulders, but it moaned into his chest at the feeling of his balls grinding against its hardening cock, tightening as the bulge in his pants grew more urgent. Its hands were gripping his thighs; it released one, bringing it up to fumble with his belt buckle.

Simon shifted his weight back onto its hips and sat upright, grinding even harder as he unlatched and tore out his belt. Gripping it at both ends, he slung it back behind the Antispiral’s head, pulling in close for another kiss. It was beyond melting, completely sublimed as its hips bucked helplessly under him.

He let go of the belt, and reached down to the fly of his pants. It couldn’t help but Help; he let out a gasp of air and a soft moan at its hand sliding past his to open the button, to lower the zipper, to slip in and stroke his cock, gently drawing it out into the air between them.

There was hardly any time before Simon had crushed his mouth against the Antispiral’s again, his hands gripping the sides of its head as it moaned into his mouth. It found its arms whipping up to clutch at his back, to wrap around and hold him tightly. There were not enough arms. There could never be enough arms.

Their bodies ground together almost all on their own—hips against hips, cock against cock, the heat between them growing and building and spinning out of control without anything resembling restraint. There was no stopping this; there was no holding back. There was no _wanting_ to hold back.

For a moment, it was as if there was nothing else in the world but this. As if all time collapsed down to one moment.

It had not, of course. There would be more moments. The world wasn’t about to end anytime soon.

Perhaps it would never end at all.


End file.
